Sales of the Unexpected

Almost half-way through the year and there’s no let-up in Pat’s condition, and a worrying sign now of a progressive deterioration. We are now under the watchful eye of our local hospice, St. Wilfrid’s, and had a nurse round on Thursday for a general chat and more pertinent questions about Pat and the prognosis. We still live in hopes of some sort of stabilisation and control, but it’s doubtful. We have at least been able to enjoy the good weather. Pat has now been out with me and Tuppence for a walk at a local recreational field. I take Pat in the wheelchair because it’s easy to push her over the flat green while Tuppence goes chasing her ball and playing with other dogs. I’ve also taken Pat out for a drive twice this week. Yesterday we had a trip to East Wittering. Couldn’t get out of the car of course, because we had Tuppence with us, but it was another way of mixing up Pat’s usually boring day. Now that the lockdown rules are being relaxed, we can expect a few more visits from our family, social distancing notwithstanding of course.

As you know, I have been running an ad. Campaign on Facebook and BookBub. The ads are costing me money but showing some signs of life. Before that my sales were dribbling along and doing very little. This month though I have seen some significant change with my KDP sales on Amazon, averaging about 2 sales a day. On D2D my sales were not performing as well as last month, having only reached 17 by about the 24th, six days ago. Then suddenly there was a jump of 19 in one day, from 17 up to 36. I was bowled over by that. Then the next day the figure leapt up to 47. I couldn’t believe it. So much so that I expected to see the figure corrected downwards within a day or so. But it has held on and I’m at 48 with one day of the month left. In fact, D2D is out-performing Amazon. The book that’s leading the sales figure is A Dangerous Game. I haven’t advertised that book in any way, so I’ve no idea why this phenomenon has happened. I’m not complaining though. My next task is to run another campaign but with a slightly different approach: I intend to test one country against another. Same ad for USA and for UK but separated. I will also be using the advice offered to Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ad School students by Alana Terry, a Christian mystery writer who has turned FB advertising into an art form and increased her book sales exponentially. I hope she has something significant to offer that others in the FB tutorial world have not. I’ve watched about a third of the video so far and she has already given me some good stuff to work with. I’ll be running a new campaign for the month of June, see how it goes.

My reading this week is still Glass Dolls. It’s growing on me, so I reckon I’ll get through to the end with this one.

I will be involved in a book promotion next week: first four days of June. I’ll be promoting 17 other authors covering about 60,000 subscribers. Hopefully my offer, No Time to Die, will attract some attention. It’s already doing so with page reads on KDP because of my FB ad. I don’t want to burst my own bubble, but the interaction I’m seeing with sales, ‘likes’, page views and people looking at my profile, is definitely growing. It would be nice to think I can establish a firm, committed fan base which could push me into a significantly higher Amazon ranking. Just got to spend more money — no brainer!

That’s it then. I wish you all well and stay safe!

Half full or half empty?

It has been a week now since Pat was discharged from hospital and signed off from cancer treatment, but that does not stop her getting unwell. We have not slept in our bed all week, and last night was pretty torrid: the worse yet. At 2.30 Pat could not muster a sensible word or settle down. As a result I phoned the ECHO service at 4.30. That was followed by a phone consultation with a doctor, and a Paramedic was dispatched to check Pat over. We had the antibiotic in our hands at 7.30. So hats off to the NHS system; it worked really well. Now we have to try and get Pat stronger. I will be arranging a phone call with our local GP to talk about the problem and asking how we will be expected to deal with this now Pat is no longer a cancer patient, bearing in mind she still has the cancer.

Having got beyond the need for sleep, I enjoyed a Zoom meeting at mid-day with our family. This was for the Parker International Quiz challenge: a recently inaugurated trophy for the Parker family. It has to be international and at mid-day because of the Aussie grandson, Sam who lives in America, and the Aussie son, Stephen, who is Sam’s dad. There were three teams, and would you believe it? We all scored 21 points. Hmm! There is a plan to do this again in a couple of weeks. Must get into shape for that.

My reading this week is Glass Dolls by D.E.White. It’s a murder mystery. Looks pretty good so far and comes recommended from a good source. My book sales are still holding their own: I’m averaging two books a day on Kindle, and just over one a day on D2D.And now D2D have made all their books available on a new French site called Vivlio. Sounds good although I’m not sure it will make much difference to me. But it’s another outlet, so well done D2D.

Like many writers, I have faith in my own ability, but often come across books whose authors I would happily concede to. One that particularly comes to mind, from the moment I finished reading it a few years ago is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I watched the film this week. It’s the second time I’ve seen it and will probably watch it again some time. Sadly, the book’s author, Mary Ann Shaffer, died the year it was published. Her niece, Annie Barrows helped her aunt finish the book. If there was one book I wish I could have written (there are probably more of course), then that’s it. If you haven’t read the book, put it on your ‘must read’ list.

I’ve signed up for a cross-promotion with author David De Lee. The promotion will bring about seventeen authors together offering a book for free or $0.99, for four days at the beginning of June. I’ve been involved with David before, and his promotions usually do well. Naturally I’ll be sending the details out to my subscribers and will also mention it on my blog post for that week. Should be good. Wish me luck!

Down in the dumps

Pat came home from hospital yesterday but has now declined further treatment. This means we are heading into the unknown. Whatever comes, we have to face it because, sadly, that’s life. My hope is that I can give Pat a quality of life that will sustain her for however long she has. I’m sitting beside her at the moment, writing this blog post while she is watching TV. I took her for a slow and gentle walk round the garden just now so she could see what I’d been up to while she’s been away. I’m struggling with the compulsion to finish writing a blog post each week, and to abandon all thoughts of book sales, promotions etc., but that might be counter-productive; I need to keep my spirits up somehow while making sure I don’t neglect Pat.

My book sales are steady. So far this month I have sold 45 ebooks and a couple of paperbacks. And my page reads are trickling along nicely. This is all down to my current campaign on Facebook although needless to say it is costing me money. But I’m sticking with it. The majority of the sales are for The Boy from Berlin of course, and it’s good to see some of my other titles selling as well.

I have to say I have given up with Joffe Books. There has been no word since the last email saying they still wanted to publish my book Past Imperfect, and they would let me know after their ‘big’ meeting to discuss back titles. I know it might happen, but it no longer seems important.

How are you all coping with the lockdown and everything that entails? We have a family visit this afternoon. Our No.2 son, Terry, is coming over with our grand-daughter, Gemma and our great-grandson, Orin. They will go through to the back garden and have their lunch while me and Pat chat to them from our bedroom window. It would be nice to sit out there with them and keep our social distance, but unfortunately little Orin might want to run over and give me and Pat a hug, and that is a risk we cannot afford to take, even though we are quite sure Orin doesn’t have the bug, nor do his mum and grandad. We have to stay safe. Even more so now with Pat’s condition.

I’ve stopped reading Alex Shaw’s thriller. I did try but just couldn’t stick with it. I think it’s more my problem than the quality of the book, but it is, in my opinion, formulaic writing: writing for a market. Bit like the Die Hard films really and their ilk. I watched Lethal Weapon 2 on Sky during the week. Pure, over the top entertainment: just the kind of thing you find in a lot of action books that sell well. I wasn’t tempted to watch Lethal Weapon 3 the following night though; there’s only so much dross you can take, isn’t there?

Well, that’s my lot for this week. I might write another post next week. If I had something exciting to share with you, I would. Hope you are all staying safe and in good health.